


daydream

by kinases



Series: ∞ [2]
Category: Infinite (Band)
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-09
Updated: 2016-11-09
Packaged: 2018-08-29 23:30:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,184
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8509822
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kinases/pseuds/kinases
Summary: woohyun learns what it means to want.





	

**Author's Note:**

> a companion fic to [gravity](http://archiveofourown.org/works/8398531) ♡

Woohyun has always been special. That’s what they tell him—that’s what they’ve always told him ever since he found out he was an alpha far earlier than everyone else did. Things were different back then, back when he was growing up. These kinds of things were hard to test for, and although they should’ve been covered, not everyone had insurance to test for status. It was just cheaper and more convenient for most parents to just find out if their son or daughter was an alpha or a beta or an omega when they reached puberty. Then, most everyone reasoned, it would be easy to tell.

Woohyun’s glad for it now, the time in elementary school his parents had bundled him into their car and driven to the nearest hospital because Woohyun was sick and they couldn’t figure out why. It had been just a simple fever, just a little cold, and Woohyun was to be released later that night. But then the doctor—a slim, pretty woman, Woohyun remembers, if only for the fact that her shoes were bright blue with pale pink hearts on them—had turned to his parents and asked if they’d wanted a blood test done on him. “It’s not going to hurt, it’s just a simple prick,” she’d assured them. “We’d just like to check for allergies—we can also tell you what your son is, if you’d like.”

The results had come in the mail a week later. He’d been on his way to his room to dump his backpack on the floor and watch some television reruns for the next few hours with his brother when his mother had called him to the living room. There’d been a pile of envelopes and letters scattered on the table—some from the landlords, some from the electric and water companies—but there was only one she was holding in her hands. “Woohyun,” she’d said, looking over the folded sheet of paper in her hands at where Woohyun had stood, one strap of his backpack still hanging off his shoulder. “Do you know what you are?” and when Woohyun had shook his head mutely, she’d answered. “You’re an alpha, Woohyun, do you know what that is?”

Woohyun had no idea, of course. He’d been eight and blissfully unaware of anything and everything that wasn’t animated and filled with talking and singing animals. Boohyun had the newest episode of their favorite after school show up, though, and Woohyun hadn’t wanted to miss it for anything, so when he’d said, “Of course, mom, do I look like I’m a baby?” his mom had just laughed and sent him off on his way to bound through the hallway and into the room Woohyun shared with his brother and crash land at his brother’s feet.

Growing up could wait another day.

But what happens is that he doesn’t really grow up. He wonders why, when he enters middle school and all of the other kids start smelling differently—not enough to be too distinguishable and noticeable, but sometimes, he’ll pass by one of the girls in the class beneath him and he’ll smell something that’s definitely not her perfume or her shampoo—something deeper than that that makes every nerve in his body come alive. And sometimes, he’ll bump into one of the guys on the basketball team who’s in the grade above him and he smells like a fight just waiting to happen, itching beneath his skin.

Then there’s him. He learns that alphas and betas and omegas all smell different ways, but it takes a while for him to learn that what he smells like is nothing at all. He and his friends are talking about it one day in between classes, just talking about whatever’s on their minds, and one of them looks straight at him and dimples and says, “Hey, being a beta isn’t so bad, you don’t have to worry about any of the ruts or blackouts. Being an alpha isn’t everything, Woohyun-ah.”

Woohyun doesn’t get the chance to correct him, and if he’s really being honest with himself, he knows that he doesn’t have it in him to say what he knows is the truth—what a blood test from five years ago had told him. He starts to think, though, that it might’ve been a mistake—what if they’d mixed up his results with someone else’s, someone who was actually an alpha and not a beta, and that’s why Woohyun’s results were messed up? Woohyun brings this up to his parents one day over dinner, and they smile at him, their faces etched with gentleness and love, and they tell him that they’d checked, too, way back when, and that he really was an alpha, and then they ask him why he’s asking all of this all of a sudden, and Woohyun doesn’t have the heart to tell them.

He doesn’t want to tell them that one of the kids he knows and hangs out with after school had brought a small capped vial to school one day. He doesn’t want to tell them that the kid pressed a finger to his lips and told all of them that his sister, who was in university, was doing some fancy research into heat cycles, and that he’d taken one of her many samples to school today to show all of his friends. He doesn’t want to tell them that his friend had uncapped the vial and passed it around, and while most of them—all of the betas in their friend group—had sniffed the clear liquid inside and looked around, bemused and confused and wondering if something was supposed to happen, Woohyun had noticed the way that the kids he knows are alphas pressed their lips tightly together, the way that their fingers turned white-knuckled against the desk, the way that they tried to pretend just the smell of it didn’t affect them at all when it so clearly did. He doesn’t want to tell them that while every alpha had clearly been affected by whatever was in that vial, that while every single one of them had had to excuse himself from lunch for a bit, Woohyun hadn’t felt a single thing at all.

 

Woohyun gets into YG first. His friends come over with bottles of soju stashed into their backpacks when they find out, and they drink to it on the carpeted floor of Woohyun’s bedroom. He’s made to promise to get them all signatures from 2NE1 and Big Bang—“and any other trainees you might see there,” they whisper excitedly, with more alcohol than is legal coursing through their veins, “who knows if they’ll be big one day.”

Woohyun doesn’t know if he can keep those promises, though—there are two envelopes on his desk. One’s heavy in his hands, and it’s almost certainly a golden ticket, the one that’ll guarantee him stardom and fame and recognition throughout Korea, and maybe even the world. But the other one’s plainer, with simple black lettering, and it feels like almost nothing in his hands. He thinks back to the representatives of each company he’d met, the things he’s heard about each one—about how they treat their trainees, about how long it’ll take to debut, about the potentials for a future he has in both—and he picks up the phone and dials the number listed on the bottom of one of the letters.

His friends think he’s crazy. They look at him like he’s betrayed them somehow, going to a no-name company when he could be in one of the biggest ones, where it’s like their dreams have been crushed instead of Woohyun’s. His parents are silent when he tells them, but his mom just puts a trembling hand on his shoulder and says, “Okay, Woohyun-ah. We trust you to make the choice you think will be the best for you.” Woohyun doesn’t miss the unspoken _we hope you know what you’re doing._ He carries these words with him, thinks about them on his way to the studio one day after school, and tells himself that he’ll make her proud—he’ll show her that she had nothing to worry about from the very beginning.

He’s almost convinced that he’s been scammed when he gets to the company building. It’s just another regular old office building with white walls and clear windows, and Woohyun swears that if he looks closely enough, he can see rows and rows of men in white collared shirts working on tax forms through some of the windows. He stays, though, when he sees the Nell posters plastered on the walls and the vans with tinted windows in the parking structure next to it. There are still posters announcing auditions on some of the walls, and Woohyun has to stifle a laugh when he sees how they were put up—with infinite care, making sure to get each corner at exactly a ninety degree angle and making sure that the bottom of each poster is level and parallel to the ground. Typical of small companies, he supposes, that they would want to try as hard as possible to recruit talent.

He’s directed to a room in the back, way down in the building, and after an elevator ride and some twists and turns in the hallways, Woohyun’s there. He steels himself and takes a deep breath, and pushes open the door. Three boys stare back at him, and he bows, hurriedly saying that “I’m Nam Woohyun, it’s nice to meet you all, I’m new here.”

The short one with the full lips is Jang Dongwoo, the one that’s slightly taller than Dongwoo with the sharp jawline is Lee Howon, and the one that’s slightly taller than Howon is Kim Sunggyu. They find out that Dongwoo is Woohyun’s age, and Dongwoo throws an arm around Woohyun’s shoulder and proclaims, “We’re friends now!” Howon makes an amused sort of noise that’s probably a stifled laugh, and Woohyun will take that for now. He manages to get Howon to laugh—finally—when he’s showing Howon a dance routine he found on the internet that’s so horribly butchered they’re torn between covering their eyes and clutching their stomachs in laughter.

The only one he can’t quite figure out is Sunggyu. There’s no mistaking the way that Sunggyu always watches him when he thinks Woohyun doesn’t notice, and Woohyun wonders if Sunggyu’s just watching him because he’s the de facto leader by age, or if there’s something else to it. It’s like he’s waiting for Woohyun to slip up, to mess up on an easy move, to crack on a note that isn’t even that high, and that only pushes Woohyun to try just that much harder. He throws into everything with everything he’s got, his hundred and ten percent, and if the quiet acknowledgment he gets from their dance and vocal trainers means anything at all, he’s doing well for himself now.

He won’t let himself be distracted. If Sunggyu wants him to mess up, so be it—but from what he can tell, from what he can smell in the practice room air, there are only two betas and one alpha here besides Woohyun himself. It’s not like he would’ve gotten too sidetracked by an omega’s presence—the sniff test he’d done in high school had been enough proof of that—but he’s glad for it regardless. Without any omegas there, though, Woohyun knows it’ll be easier for him to fully immerse himself in his work without wondering if anyone’s going to miss practice for a heat.

This way is perfect, Woohyun thinks. This way, he can prove himself—not just to their choreographers and vocal instructors, not just to his mother, not even to Sunggyu, but to himself.

 

He ends up getting more distracted than he’d intended to be. He’d started out making jabs at Sunggyu and poking fun at him just to get a rise out of him, to have him snap and see the barely repressed annoyance in his eyes, but it’s different now. He tugs at Sunggyu’s sleeve to get him to stop walking so fast just for the sake of having them walk side by side to the practice room from the lobby together, and he revels in the surprise in Sunggyu’s eyes when Woohyun opens his mouth and the words that come out aren’t crass jokes but actual and heartfelt concerns for how Sunggyu’s day has been so far.

It’s good between them, this friendship they’ve developed. Woohyun thinks Sunggyu hates him sometimes, when he exaggerates everything he does in the practice room just to get a reaction, when he fumbles a step so badly and so over the top just to see Dongwoo crumple into laughter, when he cracks on a note he knows he can reach so Sunggyu will show him how it’s really done, tightness evident in the lines around his eyes. But Woohyun knows Sunggyu doesn’t hate him, not really. He knows Sunggyu’s as invested in this just as much as Woohyun is, maybe even more than, and he knows that Sunggyu hates that Woohyun seems to treat this like a joke.

So he tries to keep these two aspects of this life different: the playful and fun him is reserved for when Sunggyu’s not feeling too tetchy but he could still use some loosening up, and the serious and focused him is reserved for those moments when he feels like he might’ve made a mistake, coming where he did, when he sees all of the others staying in the practice room late into the night and knows that he has to do better than he’s done up until now.

He doesn’t advertise it widely, but the week before he graduates, he takes time off of practice so he can finish off all his schoolwork and assignments. Sunggyu comes to his high school graduation, and with a small bouquet of flowers, says, “Congratulations, you idiot. I’m surprised you managed to even graduate on time.”

Woohyun scoffs, adjusting the tie around his neck, and plasters on the slouched pose he knows Sunggyu’s learned to associate with an annoying remark and an equally annoying curl of his lips. He tries to suppress the rush of warmth he feels when he sees Sunggyu shift from one foot to another, the winter coat on him so large that it almost swallows him whole. “Hyung, I’m the student body president of my class. What were you in high school? A delinquent?”

“No way,” Sunggyu says, bending back reflexively like Woohyun’s about to hit him with something else. His eyes are wider than Woohyun’s seen before, and there it is again, the flood of satisfaction he always gets whenever Sunggyu’s taken aback by anything Woohyun says or does—whenever Woohyun gets every step of the choreo right, whenever Woohyun hits every note of the song, whenever Woohyun proves himself to him even though he doesn’t really have to. “No fucking way, Nam Woohyun, you’re lying. There’s no way.”

Woohyun wordlessly passes Sunggyu the schedule for the graduation ceremony, tapping at where the speech given by the student body president is noted in the timeline, and then at where Woohyun’s name is written right next to it. He lets it show fully, the smirk on his face, when Sunggyu looks up at him with shock and surprise and maybe even what Woohyun wants to believe is admiration. “Look at this, hyung. Don’t you think I’m amazing now?” he preens, and he watches Sunggyu hug the bouquet of flowers closer to him.

Sunggyu clamps his jaws shut, his lips thin lines now, and uses the sheet of cardstock to hit Woohyun in the arm. “Shut up, Woohyun, just because you’re popular doesn’t mean you’re actually smart, alright? Anyway, you don’t need these flowers anymore, you can get them from all of your other adoring fangirls.” Woohyun’s about to respond when Sunggyu blinks, and it’s like what Woohyun had said earlier just registers in his brain, because in the next split second, Woohyun’s running for his life, Sunggyu hot on his heels and screaming, “Hey, you bastard, I wasn’t a fucking delinquent—say you’re sorry!”

Yeah, Woohyun thinks, even as he’s panting for breath with Sunggyu’s hand around his throat—tight enough for Woohyun to feel the pressure on his airways, but just loose enought that he knows Sunggyu doesn’t mean it, that he knows Sunggyu’s only annoyed that Woohyun’s done something Sunggyu never did—this is what he came here for.

 

Myungsoo is really cute. He’s like a cat, constanly seeking attention from the others, curling up against Sunggyu when he’s reviewing some song lyrics, draping himself over Dongwoo when there’s nothing else to do. It’s like Myungsoo’s presence here has filled a hole none of them even thought they had with all of his clinginess, and the fact that Myungsoo’s very clearly an omega seems to only make matters even better—to round out their two beta, two alpha team. Woohyun thinks they’ll debut like this, just him and Sunggyu and Dongwoo and Howon and Myungsoo.

But then they get Sungjong and then they get Sungyeol, and then their family becomes a family of seven. Woohyun gets used to sitting down on the couch and then promptly getting sat on by someone—sometimes it’s Howon or Sungjong, and Howon does it because he can, and Sungjong does it because Howon tells him to so he can piss Woohyun off even more, but usually it’s Sunggyu who pushes Woohyun down to lie down on the couch, who makes himself comfortable on Woohyun’s thighs as he grabs the remote from one of the other kids and turns the channel to some rock band’s guest appearance on a talk show.

He’d be lying if he said Sunggyu doesn’t weigh on the other side of manageable right now, but the weight of Sunggyu’s body on his is comforting, and Woohyun’s so close to falling asleep to the white noise of the television in the background and to the soft laughs Sunggyu lets out every once in a while. He likes this Sunggyu, the Sunggyu that doesn’t have to watch them with sharp and keen eyes to make sure they’re all hitting the right steps, the Sunggyu that doesn’t purse his lips at them whenever they go just a little flat on a note, the Sunggyu that’s relaxed and open in a way he can only be at home with them.

Then Sunggyu shifts, moving around just slightly, and Woohyun has to bite his lip to keep himself from kicking Sunggyu off of him when Sunggyu ends up scooting just a little bit higher up Woohyun’s body than where he’d been sitting, and Sunggyu doesn’t stop moving at all—and it happens so quickly that Woohyun doesn’t even have time to blink before he’s staring down at Sunggyu, Sunggyu’s eyes wide and a flush high on his cheeks, with a hand around both of Sunggyu’s wrists and holding them above his head and with his other hand pressed against Sunggyu’s chest just above his heart. His heart is beating so quickly, Woohyun notes, almost like he’s observing it from somewhere else, and as soon as he thinks that, Sunggyu shoves Woohyun off of him and onto the ground, pausing to stare down at Woohyun on the floor again before he’s darting out of the living room and into the bathroom.

Woohyun stares at the door for what feels like an eternity, sitting on the floor and flexing all of his fingers and toes just to make sure they still work, that they still listen to him. He’s not sure what happened, but he’s never done anything like that before, not even to any of his omega friends. but now that it’s happened, he can’t get that image out of his head—Sunggyu with his mouth parted just slightly, Sunggyu with his hair fanned around him on the cushions, Sunggyu staring up at him and only him. Woohyun groans and clambers back onto the couch so he can bury his face in the pillow, and he waits for Sunggyu to come by him and sit on him so everything will be back to normal again and they can all forget about this thing that wasn’t ever supposed to happen.

Sunggyu doesn’t come home that night.

 

When he sprains his shoulder, Howon has to hold Sunggyu back from fucking up Woohyun’s other shoulder. They’re in the middle of the entire field, but thankfully, the others are all surrounding them. Woohyun doesn’t know how their managers would react if hundreds of fansites released photos of Sunggyu lunging at Woohyun’s neck once he’d been seen by the on-site physician—they’d probably be put on some kind of house arrest, and Woohyun doesn’t know how long he could survive having to stay in the same space as the other six without ever being allowed to leave. It’s only when Sunggyu promises, with his pinky in Howon’s, that he won’t injure or maim Woohyun too seriously that Howon lets go.

Sunggyu takes a deep breath, looks directly at Woohyun’s eyes, and says, “take better care of yourself, you asshole.”

Woohyun watches the way Sunggyu’s shoulders slump when he walks away, like he’s upset by something that doesn’t affect him, like he thinks he’s somehow responsible for Woohyun’s own accident, like he’s holding himself at fault for letting something like this happen to a member of their team when it was completely all Woohyun’s fault to begin with. The others swarm him, Sungyeol asking him if he’s okay in his right ear and Myungsoo asking him if he needs any painkillers in his left ear, and in the second that it takes for Sungjong to pop up in front of him to ask where it hurts, he loses track of Sunggyu.

Sunggyu isn’t home, either, and when the managers send the others out to look for him at midnight after all of their frantic texts and calls fail, they all come back empty-handed (except for Sungyeol, who brings a six-pack of soju home and sagely hands it to Woohyun, saying that “you’ll need it to get through the night”). Woohyun swallows five pills from the medicine cabinet before downing two bottles of water—he figures that if his shoulder’s busted for now, he should at least keep his voice in the best condition it can be. He settles down into bed, drawing his blanket around him and keeping as much weight as possible on the right side of his body.

He’s barely closed his eyes when he hears the unmistakable creak of the door opening, and he shuts his eyes as quickly as he can to avoid Sunggyu’s inevitable questions about why he hasn’t been sleeping yet, why he’s still up when he could be snoozing already. There’s the slight rustling of a plastic bag, the low and muted thunk of something heavy being lowered onto the floor next to Woohyun’s head, and Woohyun can just barely make out the soft sounds of Sunggyu’s breathing. The door closes again, and then Woohyun hears the shower being turned on in the bathroom, and he knows that Sunggyu’s finally home.

It’s not until the door opens again and Woohyun hears the padding of Sunggyu’s slippered feet heading into bed that the pressure on his shoulder subsides, and it’s not until he hears Sunggyu’s breathing slow down into an even in and out that he can fall asleep.

The first thing Woohyun notices when he wakes up in the morning is that Sunggyu’s gone, and he’s about to text the others in their group chat that it must’ve been a miracle that Sunggyu woke up so early when he notices that it’s almost noon. Sunggyu must’ve let him sleep in, then, and Woohyun knows they have some schedules today. He feels more than just a twinge of guilt at that, and he wonders just how much he’s going to be holding the rest of them back now that he’s injured like this. Sunggyu hasn’t messaged him about it yet, though, from what he can tell on his phone, so he takes that to mean that Sunggyu’s not going to hold any of this against him.

The second thing Woohyun notices is how there are pillows pressed up against his back, and he doesn’t need to look at them to know that they’re Sunggyu’s pillows, the ones Woohyun always makes fun of him for having so many of when they both know Sunggyu’s a compulsive pillow hoarder. It’s what they’d always called his nest back in the day, Sunggyu’s tendency to take all of the blankets and pillows for himself, but Woohyun’d found out that maybe a nest wasn’t the best thing to call it, so he’d moved on to just poking fun at Sunggyu for having a weak back and an even weaker body and an even weaker inability to resist taking as many pillows as he could. He’s grateful for it now, when it’s apparent that the pillows are there to help him not jostle his shoulder more than it needs to be when he’s sleeping.

The third thing Woohyun notices is that there’s a large plastic bag on the ground next to his pillow, and he realizes that it must’ve been what Sunggyu had brought home last night while he’d been pretending to sleep. Woohyun pushes himself up off the bed, supporting his weight with his right arm, and he ignores the throb of his shoulder when he moves too quickly for the movement to be easily tolerated. It’s harder to ignore the way his chest suddenly aches when he opens the bag and sees packs and packs of painkillers and Woohyun’s favorite chips and drinks and candy and, at the very bottom, a new brace for his shoulder. He’d been planning on going with one of the managers to get something to support his shoulder while it healed, but he doesn’t need to anymore, now that Sunggyu’s taken it upon himself to do everything Woohyun couldn’t.

Woohyun swallows the lump in his throat and fumbles around the ground for his phone. It’s there, stacked neatly on top of his battery pack and his charger, and Woohyun knows for a fact that he’d tossed it haphazardly somewhere last night. His chest aches again, and he absently rubs at the skin above his heart as if it’ll dull the throbbing. with one hand, he types out a message for Sunggyu and taps send. He gets the notification that it’s been seen within seconds, and a reply comes within a minute, and this time, it takes everything Woohyun has not to fall over onto the bed and press the base of his palm against his chest when it feels like his heart is about to escape from his body.

_hyung, you didn’t have to get me all of this~ i could’ve gotten it myself~ where were you last night~ were you out drinking~ are you replacing me on schedules~ don’t do that, okay~ i can pay you back for the brace and the snacks, just let me know~_

_Don’t worry about it. I'll take care of it. Just rest for now and feel better._

 

Really, he’s fine. It’s what he tells everyone after he gets home from the car accident, that he’s fine, that there aren’t any injuries to worry about, that he’s as fine as he could be. and then when they look at his shoulder, with Sunggyu’s brace still new on it, Woohyun laughs and shoves them off and tells them that he’s supposed to be the annoying one here, why are they asking him so many questions? He keeps up this front for the rest of the kids because he knows they’re as scared as he was, because he knows that the second they’d gotten the message from their managers that _Woohyun’s been in a car accident, the car slipped in some rain on his way to the drama filming, will update you guys when we know more_ they’d gotten out of their house and into the rain and crammed inside the car the managers had left behind at the dorm.

They’d come to the hospital to visit him, and the nurse at his bed had gotten so annoyed by the volume of people coming to visit him that she’d limited the number of guests to just one. He’d expected them all to leave now that they couldn’t all bother him at once, but they’d all stayed, and they’d all lined up one by one to come into the room and sit by Woohyun’s side. Howon was first, patting Woohyun’s hand and telling him that they would take good care of his clothes and his restaurant if he got into another car accident. Then it was Dongwoo, who had told Woohyun in a voice that sounded like it was on the edge of tears, that Woohyun was an asshole for making them all worry but that he was beyond glad that Woohyun was fine.

Then it was Sungyeol, bringing a bag of cheese puffs with him and telling Woohyun, once again, in the same voice, that Woohyun would need these to get through the night—except this time, the hug Sungyeol gave him had been tighter than he’d ever hugged Woohyun before, and Woohyun thinks he’ll be forgiven if he fondly remembers the moment a tear had slid down Sungyeol’s cheek. Myungsoo had come in and sat down on the chair next to Woohyun’s bed and asked him just why he enjoyed chasing injuries so much, and when Woohyun had responded, “Because it’s fun,” Myungsoo had narrowed his eyes at him and said, “Hyung, it won’t be fun if you’re not around anymore,” and Woohyun had been left staring at the door in shock. Then Sungjong had marched in and told him, “Woohyun-hyung, you’re stupid,” and Woohyun had grinned as best as he could and said, “Hey, why are you using that kind of language with me?” and Sungjong had frowned at him and said, very primly, “Only idiots get themselves into car accidents five days after they almost break their shoulder.” Woohyun had to admit that Sungjong had had a point there.

Sunggyu hadn’t come at all. Woohyun had expected him to be there, screaming and yelling in Woohyun’s face about how irresponsible and reckless he was, how lucky he was to be alive right now, and he’d thought that the hospital bed wouldn’t be a very brief respite from all of that noise he had to suffer through in the dorms, and he had been dead wrong. Sunggyu hadn’t even been there, and Woohyun only figures out why when he comes back to the dorm and goes into his room to see Sunggyu sitting against the wall, tapping away at his phone. Sunggyu looks up when Woohyun opens the door, and Woohyun sees the exact moment that Sunggyu’s lips thin out into a bloodless line.

“Please don’t yell—” Woohyun says, with his arms raised and his hands palms out, at the same time Sunggyu says, with his eyes still as blank as ever, “Sit the fuck down.”

Woohyun sits. He barely even breathes when Sunggyu crawls forward from where he’d been sitting next to the wall, on his hands and knees, to kneel in front of Woohyun, and he fully expects the anger to blow up now, and when he sees the slightest movement from Sunggyu, he closes his eyes like it’ll protect him from what’s about to come.

Instead of sharp jabs into his stomach and sharper words into his heart, Sunggyu pitches forward, and Woohyun almost drops him when his forehead lands squarely onto Woohyun’s shoulder. It takes a few seconds for Woohyun to realize that Sunggyu’s shaking, and when Woohyun tries to ask if Sunggyu’s okay, Sunggyu reaches upward, still not looking at Woohyun’s face, to slap a hand over Woohyun’s mouth. It takes another few seconds for Woohyun to realize that Sunggyu’s breathing heavily against his shoulder—not from sickness or exertion or anything, but from the anger and worry he’s feeling. “Hyung—” Woohyun starts, before Sunggyu cuts him off again.

“Shut up,” Sunggyu says finally, lifting his face off from Woohyun’s shoulder and looking him squarely in the eyes. “Shut up,” Sunggyu says, pressing a hand to Woohyun’s chest and pushing him back down onto the bed, his other hand deftly tugging Woohyun’s sweatpants down. “Shut the fuck up, Nam Woohyun,” Sunggyu says, slicking Woohyun up with lube from the bedside drawer and lowering himself back down onto Woohyun’s hips with a barely hidden hiss. “Don’t talk anymore.”

Woohyun doesn’t talk anymore. He watches, instead. He watches the way Sunggyu’s hair glints in the artificial light of the lamp they have above their beds, watches the way Sunggyu’s entire body goes slack when Woohyun hits that spot inside him, watches the way Sunggyu’s hands scrabble for purchase on Woohyun’s chest, his stomach, his thighs, before settling on bunching up the sheets beneath them. He watches the way Sunggyu fucks back into him with an intensity he hasn’t seen before, watches the way Sunggyu’s hips roll back into his, not following, but leading, watches the way Sunggyu crumples when he comes, falling forward onto Woohyun’s chest and breathing out against Woohyun’s neck, his harsh gasps the only sounds in the room.

Woohyun knows it would be so easy, too easy, to knot him here and now, to take what he needs from Sunggyu—but there’s a voice in his head that keeps telling him it’s better if Sunggyu doesn’t know, so he doesn’t. He waits until Sunggyu’s done, until Sunggyu’s heartbeat, rapid against his, slows down from the near-frantic rhythm it’d been just before. He’s about to reach over for some tissues, but Sunggyu pushes him back down again, and with a few quick strokes of Sunggyu’s hand, Woohyun’s gone.

Sunggyu’s quiet when he takes the tissues from Woohyun and cleans them both off, and it’s not until he’s pushed Woohyun to lie on his right side so he can make himself comfortable curled up next to Woohyun’s back that he leans forward just slightly, just enough for him to be able to press his lips to the back of Woohyun’s neck, and Woohyun closes his eyes and wonders if he can count this as a kiss, and he ignores the way his heart aches in time to the ache in his shoulder. “I was so scared,” Sunggyu whispers, his voice low and hoarse, and Woohyun knows he’s not imagining the tinge of desperation in his words, “I was so fucking scared. Don’t fucking leave, holy shit, I was so scared.”

“I know,” Woohyun swallows, and then says into the air in front of him, and he reaches behind him for Sunggyu’s hand, tangling their fingers together. Sunggyu’s hand is soft against his own—he’s always loved Sunggyu’s hands, how thin his fingers are, how smooth his palm is, how warm each touch of his fingertips is, but right now, Sunggyu’s hands are clammy and cold. He squeezes Sunggyu’s fingers, hoping that that can convey more than any of his words ever could, and he knows that what he says next are the right ones when Sunggyu exhales a long, low breath against his neck that he feels, more than hears, like those were the words he’d been expecting to hear all along. “I know, I’m sorry. I’m here now, I’m here now, and I’m safe.”

 

He tries not to notice, he really does. But whenever he looks at Sunggyu in the practice room mirror, he’ll remember every line of Sunggyu’s face, every expression etched across the curve of his eyebrows and the swell of his cheeks, and he knows that Sunggyu’s exhausted. As a friend, Woohyun wants to tell Sunggyu that it’s okay to take a break and relax for just one day; as a member, Woohyun wants to take Sunggyu’s hand and let him know that he and the others are there for him; but as the something more than a friend Woohyun wants to be, he wants to grab Sunggyu by the wrist and shove him into his room and not let him out until he’s slept for more than four hours. He knows Sunggyu wouldn’t do it, though; he wouldn’t let his pride as the leader let him take a day off just to sleep when all the members are working, just like how he doesn’t want anyone to tell him that he’s any less of a leader because he’s an omega.

But in the harsh and unyielding light of the practice rooms, he’s not much more than someone for Sunggyu to bark orders at. He winces when he almost trips over an untied shoelace and nearly bumps into Sungjong, and he knows he’s about to hear his name yelled out—but then he doesn’t, and he looks up into the mirror again and he sees how glazed over Sunggyu’s eyes are, how his tongue keeps darting out to wet his lips, how he’s swaying on his feet—not too noticeably, but just enough for Woohyun to know that something’s wrong. He catches Sunggyu before he falls, and he crumples in Woohyun’s arms, his fingers tightly bunched up in the cotton of Woohyun’s worn t-shirt. The smell of Sunggyu’s heat is heavy in the air, and Woohyun has only a split second to wonder about why none of them had noticed it until just now before the others are shoving at him and telling him to get Sunggyu _out, out, out_.

He can barely concentrate on the car ride home, not when Sunggyu’s sprawled out in the backseat and making the noises that Woohyun’s only heard against his sweat-slick skin late at night, not when his own hands are white-knuckled against the steering wheel, not when his self-control is so rapidly disappearing in front of him. He thinks, dumbly, back to that time in high school when his friend had brought that vial of heat slick to school and he hadn’t felt anything at all, and he wonders if it’s different now because it’s a real omega he’s smelling, or if it’s because his attraction to that smell is only intensifying the feelings he already has. He stops thinking, though, since every moment he spends thinking is another moment he has to spend in this car with Sunggyu and it’s another moment he has to hold himself back from joining him there in the backseat.

They get back to their dorms in what Woohyun thinks must be record time, and as Woohyun hauls Sunggyu out of the car and into the elevator, he tries to ignore how tight his pants are now, how quick his heart is beating, and tries to focus on just getting Sunggyu home. When he wrenches the door of Sunggyu’s room open, Sunggyu won’t let go of his arm, and Woohyun knows, with his heart sinking down to his stomach, what Sunggyu’s going to ask when he presses the length of his body against Woohyun’s. Sunggyu’s usually taller than Woohyun is, and he’s always proud of that, but now, he’s staring up at Woohyun and clutching at his shoulders like he can’t support his own weight anymore. “Please,” Sunggyu whispers, breathless, and one of his hands traces down Woohyun’s chest, moving downwards until he can cup Woohyun through his shorts. Woohyun swallows and tries to pull away, but Sunggyu’s other hand is a vice grip around Woohyun’s arm, and he’s looking back up at Woohyun again and his eyes are clear when he says, “Please help me, I know you want this, please, Woohyun, please do this for me—”

Woohyun wrenches his arm out of Sunggyu’s grasp so suddenly that Sunggyu almost falls backwards, and he only has time to whisper out a quick “Sorry, hyung,” before he’s shutting the door and stepping away from it. This is for Sunggyu’s own good, he tells himself over and over again, holding his arms close to his body like he’s trying to shield himself from something. He slides down onto the floor, presses his hands to his ears, and tries to drown out the sounds of Sunggyu’s whines by going over every song he knows in his head. He knows Sunggyu’s heats haven’t ever been this bad, this desperately needy, and he knows it’s probably his fault. Sunggyu’s never had a heat like this before—he’d treated them only as minor annoyances in the past, like they merited nothing more than a quick solution to get rid of. he’d been proud of the fact that he hadn’t ever had to go to a room to wait out his heats before, and Woohyun knows that come morning, Sunggyu’s going to go to Woohyun and tell him he’s sorry for acting that way and they can pretend like nothing ever happened.

But then Woohyun remembers that time he’d fucked Sunggyu in their room once, where he’d had Sunggyu’s legs over his shoulders and Sunggyu’s hands in his hair, where he’d turned away after they’d finished to grab a towel to clean him off because he couldn’t look at him for too much longer. Sunggyu had been beautiful then, lying there in the soft light of the moon, with his hair spread out over the pillow and his hands absently tracing patterns and words into the sheets and the smallest and most sated smile on his face, and Woohyun had known that he would’ve done something they both would’ve regretted in the morning if he kept looking. So he’d leaned over to wipe all the sweat and come from Sunggyu’s stomach and Sunggyu had so suddenly leaned upwards and Woohyun had jerked backwards and the second Woohyun had felt Sunggyu’s lips against his cheek, his heart had also crumbled into pieces.

He’d told Sunggyu the very first time they’d done this that it didn’t have to mean anything at all, but now he knows that he wasn’t doing it for Sunggyu’s sake, that he wasn’t doing it to reassure Sunggyu that he was alright and that Woohyun would take care of him just for this and that there were no feelings involved—he knows now that he was only trying to convince himself of something that isn’t true at all. He wants Sunggyu more than he’s ever wanted anything before, and he doesn’t know how to stop himself from feeling, not when it’s getting harder and harder to imagine a life with anyone but him with every touch Sunggyu lets linger on the inside of his wrist, with every glance Sunggyu sends his way during a fanmeeting, with every smile Sunggyu gives him like he’s the only one in the world who gets to see it.

 

It’s hard to convince himself that he’s not falling heads over heels—that he hasn’t already. It’s even harder convincing the others. One night, Sunggyu doesn’t come home until late, and they’re about to call him when Woohyun gets a call from him first. He picks up his phone, ringing with an incoming call from Sunggyu, and in as soothing a voice as he can muster, asks, “Where are you, hyung?”

The voice that comes through the phone isn’t Sunggyu’s—it’s someone else’s, one of his friends, and Woohyun thinks it’s somehow familiar, like he’s heard it on the radio before. “Uh, hey. You’re Woohyun, right?” Woohyun barely has time to get out a “yes,” let alone time to ask who this person is before he’s interrupted. “Great, can you pick him up? We went out drinking but he kinda passed out. And now he’s sleeping on me. Save me. Please. Please save me.” The person gives Woohyun the address of the bar Sunggyu’s currently passed out at, and after an impassioned plea to save him from Sunggyu “because he’s fucking heavy, god,” the line goes dead.

Woohyun stares at the phone in his hands for a few minutes before he looks back around the room and asks, “So, who wants to pick up our fearless leader?” Howon slants a disbelieving glance at him, and Sungyeol scoffs.

“What do you mean you’re not going to do it?” Sungyeol asks, annoyance etched into every feature of his, and he’s already put back his earbuds in from where he’d taken them off to eavesdrop on Woohyun’s conversation. “Just go already, it’s already late.” Sungyeol turns back to the game he’d been playing before the call, and Woohyun has to resist the urge to kick the couch Sungyeol’s laying on.

“Yeah, just get him, can you?” Howon’s gone back to trying to straighten Myungsoo’s hair from its natural frizzy state, and Woohyun nearly bursts out laughing at the look of concentration on Howon’s face—it’s something Woohyun doesn’t usually see on Howon, something that’s usually reserved for the hardest choreographies and the trickiest melodies. “Myungsoo, stop moving, seriously.”

Sungjong stares up at him from the ground where he’s been playing some board games with Dongwoo. “Hyung, make sure you don’t get drunk too, alright? You can’t drive Sunggyu-hyung home if you’re drunk, too,” Sungjong says, a false sense of innocence plastered all over his face, but the curl of his lips tells Woohyun all he needs to know, and Woohyun scowls as Dongwoo collapses into laughter, kicking his feet up into the air.

“Ha ha,” Woohyun says as sarcastically as he can, but without any real venom. They send him off with requests to bring them back some soju and chicken, and he yells back at them that they should come along with him if they’re that hungry. It’s cold and snowy out, though, so Woohyun isn’t surprised when no one offers to come along for the ride. It doesn’t take too long to get to the restaurant he’d been given directions to, and when he gets there, he sees Sunggyu’s familiar figure in the corner. There’s another taller man there, and when Woohyun gets closer, he bows nearly ninety degrees, because— “Joonyoung-ssi, I’ll get him off of you now, sorry about the wait,” Woohyun says, reaching for Sunggyu. He’s completely passed out, Woohyun notes with a pang of his heart, with his head pillowed against Joonyoung’s shoulder and an empty bottle of soju in one of his hands.

Joonyoung notices where Woohyun’s looking, and he smiles wryly up at him. “He fell asleep like this. I couldn’t get him off, I already tried so many times to get him to sleep on the table instead,” Joonyoung explains, and Woohyun’s standing so close to him now that he can smell Joonyoung’s alpha scent mixed in with the familiar fried smells of chicken. He jostles his shoulder just a little bit, and Sunggyu makes a noise that’s somewhere in between disapproval and annoyance in his sleep, shifting around to find a more comfortable spot.

“I woke him up just for a little bit to ask him who I should call, and he said your name. It was easy enough to find your number in his phone, but he was so annoying about it.” Joonyoung looks up at Woohyun then, something that Woohyun can’t quite decipher in the other alpha’s eyes. “But he wouldn’t stop saying your name, Woohyun. He kept calling for you and asking where you were. He only stopped about five minutes before you came.”

Woohyun runs Joonyoung’s words over and over in his brain during the entire drive back. Joonyoung had waved him off when he’d tried to pay for their drinks and the food, saying that it was his duty to take care of Sunggyu, and something in Woohyun had been irked at that—although he’d immediately felt stupid for feeling that way, and he’d had to remind himself that Sunggyu wasn’t his to take care of, that Sunggyu had other friends outside of their group as well. What he can’t forget is how Joonyoung had smiled when he’d recounted what Sunggyu had supposedly said, like Joonyoung knows something he’s not telling Woohyun and he’s getting a kick out of it.

Just that is enough to make Woohyun press on the gas just a little harder, and he’s only startled out of it when Sunggyu shifts in his sleep in the passenger seat, letting out a soft snore. His head lolls to the side, finally dropping onto the passenger seat window where he seems to be the most comfortable, and there, he goes still and quiet again. “Sorry,” Woohyun whispers into the night air, to no one at all, and as he drives, he keeps one eye on the road and one eye on Sunggyu. He knows he shouldn’t be doing this, that he’s endangering not only himself and other drivers, but also Sunggyu, but it’s hard for him to tear his eyes away.

Woohyun has to carry Sunggyu back to their floor. Sunggyu’s not waking up, even when Woohyun taps his shoulder and calls his name, and Woohyun pauses for just a moment before he’s looping an arm underneath Sunggyu’s legs and bracing his other arm around Sunggyu’s shoulders and lifting. He’s suddenly grateful for all of the days and nights he spends in the gym working out when carrying Sunggyu into the lobby and up the elevator and down the hallway to the door of their dorm doesn’t even take that much effort.

Sungyeol hoots when he opens the door to find Woohyun with Sunggyu in his arms, and Woohyun doesn’t have time for this, not when Sungyeol doing this is only going to incite Howon to get in on it too. “So, when’s the wedding?” Sungyeol asks, his eyes half moons on his face. “Can I give a speech? Oh, can I be your best man? Please?”

“Shut up, no, and no,” Woohyun answers, and he pauses in the doorway to toe off his shoes and kick them off in the general direction of the shoe rack. Sunggyu shifts a little when he does that, and Woohyun stills, like he doesn’t want to wake him up. but Sunggyu only moves closer to Woohyun’s chest, burying his nose in the fabric of Woohyun’s coat and snuffling, and Woohyun slowly straightens back up, keeping an eye on Sunggyu’s face to check for movement.

When he looks back at Sungyeol’s face, there’s a curious expression in his eyes.

“What?” Woohyun asks, suddenly tired, and all he wants to do now is to lie down and sleep for the next thirty years. But clearly, Sungyeol’s intent on not letting that happen.

“Nothing,” Sungyeol replies, just as curiously. He doesn’t say anything else, and Woohyun takes it as his cue to get back into their shared room. Sunggyu doesn’t let go of his coat even when Woohyun lays him down in bed, and Woohyun has to pry Sunggyu’s fingers off his lapel. Sunggyu curls into himself then, tucking his knees to his chest and pillowing his head on his arms. Woohyun means to shower and change and get into bed, but for some reason, he’s crawling onto the mattress next to Sunggyu and laying his head down onto the pillow and when he shifts closer, Sunggyu’s eyes blink open—not open enough to be completely coherent, but just enough so that Woohyun knows he’s not just dreaming.

“Woohyun,” Sunggyu says, and Woohyun knows he’s not imagining the fond smile on Sunggyu’s face right now. He wishes, so desperately, that he has a camera on him right now because this is the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen, this smile of Sunggyu’s, and he almost misses the next words. “I knew you would come for me. You always do,” Sunggyu murmurs quietly, and then he’s asleep again. Woohyun watches the rise and fall of his chest, the curling of his fingers against the fabric of his own shift, the soft indents that every breath he takes makes into the pillows.

Woohyun falls asleep staring at the way Sunggyu’s eyelashes are long against his cheeks and the way Sunggyu’s cheeks are still pink from the cold outside, and he doesn’t even remember what he’d been so worried about in the first place.

 

Howon is exactly what an alpha should be, Woohyun thinks. Howon is the embodiment of what people look for in an alpha: he’s strong and broad and handsome and artistic and kind and caring and although he isn’t tall, he’s tall enough. Woohyun knows people have probably written love songs for Howon and uploaded them on the internet for everyone else to see—they’d be stupid not to, when he’s everything an omega could ever want in a mate. it’s in the way Howon carries himself, strong and purposeful, never wasting energy on useless movements. Howon treats the world like his stage, and Woohyun knows that if he tries to say that he doesn’t envy Howon for the ease with which he seems to be able to do anything and everything, he’d be lying.

Woohyun had asked him, once, if Howon had ever helped an omega out with a heat, and Howon had shrugged and said, “Yeah, but it didn’t really mean anything. they just wanted some help.” And Woohyun figures that that’s the way Howon is, where he’s willing to help out omegas in heat but he neither expects nor wants too much from them. Woohyun knows that Howon’s a hopeless romantic at heart, though; no alpha would have his entire family planned out down to the genders and age differences of his children if he weren’t a complete sucker for love stories in the end.

He wonders if it’s a bad thing, really, that he hasn’t put that much thought into what he wants from a family, what he wants in a future. He’d never even thought about it, not until Sunggyu happened, and even now, he doesn’t even know if a future with Sunggyu is one that he’ll be able to have. Because while Howon had undoubtedly been asked by countless omegas, male and female, to have him help them out for a few days, while Howon had undoubtedly had to turn down more people than he could help, Woohyun had never even been around an omega in heat until Sunggyu. He isn’t going to kid himself by pretending he doesn’t know the reason why—it’s because Howon looks and feels and _smells_ like an alpha, and Woohyun doesn’t smell like anything at all.

He supposes that’s just another reason why he shouldn’t let Sunggyu further into his life. He’d been attracted to Sunggyu when he’d thought he was a beta, from the very first days in the practice room together. Woohyun hadn’t known anyone as passionate about singing as himself before Sunggyu came into his life, and that had sparked something in him, a competitive spirit that he’d never felt before. He has Sunggyu to thank for so much—for teaching him what it means to be part of a team, for teaching him what it means to put all of his heart and soul into writing and composing and finally singing his own songs, for teaching him what it means to love another person as much as he loves himself.

He has so much to thank Sunggyu for, so much that he knows he’ll never be able to repay in full, and that’s why, Woohyun thinks, he can’t let Sunggyu get any closer to him. Woohyun knows he’s made it obvious he doesn’t want anything more from Sunggyu than just the physical relationship, and he hopes that Sunggyu feels the same, that Sunggyu will find someone who is clearly an alpha and someone who isn’t teetering on the edge of being a beta or an alpha or even somewhere in between, that Sunggyu will realize that Woohyun isn’t the one for him and that he’ll move on, and only then can Woohyun move along with his life.

Not letting himself fall further in love with Sunggyu is harder than it sounds, when Sunggyu is just always there by his side, smiling in the way that makes Woohyun’s stomach tie itself into knots and touching Woohyun’s wrists in the way that makes him just want to spin Sunggyu around and push him into the wall and kiss him until his lips are bruised and cherry-red, and sometimes, he does just that.

Sometimes, he spreads Sunggyu out over one of their spare tables backstage after shoving all of the clothes on it off onto the ground and he hooks Sunggyu’s legs around his waist and he lets Sunggyu run his nails all over his back whenever it gets to be too much and he wears the angry red marks like a trophy for the next days, even as Sunggyu apologizes profusely for not cutting his nails, even as Woohyun runs his own fingers over the marks and imagines that they’re Sunggyu’s fingers on him again.

Sometimes, he joins Sunggyu in the shower, with a lopsided smile on his face as he says, “They said we should try to save water, so we should bathe together, right?” and he gets onto his knees in front of Sunggyu, even as the warm water cools around them, and he takes him down all the way and and he presses one, two, three fingers deep inside Sunggyu and relishes the way he squirms on his fingers, and then he swallows every last drop when Sunggyu comes from everything that’s assaulting his senses.

Sometimes, they don’t do anything at all, when he tugs Sunggyu out of their dorm, his fingers tight around Sunggyu’s wrist, and leads him up to the roof and they spend hours just talking and staring out into the stars, and it’s usually so so hard to see the constellations in the seoul night sky because of all of the light pollution, but for some reason, they have an especially dark patch of sky all to themselves, and all Woohyun wants to do is to take Sunggyu’s hand in his and point to a star in the center of the sky right above them and tell him that he would go up there and bring back a star if only Sunggyu asked.

But every single time, Sunggyu looks at him with that same fond smile, that same look in his eyes that isn’t quite lust, but something else, and Woohyun hates that he loves it so much because he knows that with every second that passes, the slimmer his chances of escaping from this are.

It’s even worse during live performances and concerts, where it’s harder to hide all of their interactions. Sunggyu always looks out for him, and for some dumb and insane reason, Woohyun always tries to show off. He throws his microphone from one hand to another, he mouths some funny jokes he’d seen on the internet the day before, he uses his hand motions to make fun of some of the other members’ hairstyles—the list goes on and on and on, and Woohyun isn’t proud of it. Because every single time he does some stupid trick or says some stupid joke or makes some stupid gesture, Sunggyu always reciprocates. He always laughs, soundless in the playback music they always have at a near-deafening volume in the background, and he always grins at Woohyun like they’re sharing some secret joke that’s just for the two of them to know about.

Woohyun wants to cut Sunggyu out of his life, but when Sunggyu seems to be unknowingly and inadvertently completely fixed in his place in Woohyun’s heart, Woohyun doesn’t know if he can keep his promise to himself to let Sunggyu find someone better in the end.

 

Woohyun’s glad for it when their company gets them another apartment just above their old one. Maybe, he thinks, if he doesn’t have to see Sunggyu every day, maybe if he doesn’t have to wake up to Sunggyu’s face next to his, maybe if he doesn’t have to fall asleep to the rhythmic in and out of Sunggyu’s breathing, he’ll stop loving him. He doesn’t realize, though, how much it hurts when he takes his t-shirts and his shorts and his jackets and his shoes out of their room and all that’s left is Sunggyu’s clothing on his own side of the room.

He brings his own mattress up to the new apartment that he shares with Myungsoo and Sungyeol and Sungjong, and he gets his own room now. He dumps his mattress onto the ground and spreads his sheets over it and he dusts his pants off and looks at the room. it’s empty, the walls are bare of posters of Nell and there aren’t any drawers full of vitamins and supplements in them, and Woohyun thinks that this must be what loneliness feels like. He hasn’t been alone in such a long time, ever since he decided to call back with his acceptance of their offer, ever since he graduated high school and moved into the dorm, ever since he found himself with six brothers.

He’d always felt like the room he shared with Sunggyu was too small, that he couldn’t sleep well if Sunggyu had his clothes on the bed and his bag on the ground and everything was everywhere, but now he realizes that he’d had the best sleep of his life whenever Sunggyu had an arm thrown across Woohyun’s shoulders and a leg hooked over one of Woohyun’s and his nose pressed into the side of Woohyun’s neck—now he realizes he can’t sleep if Sunggyu’s more than an arm’s reach away, if Sunggyu’s an entire door and stairwell and another door away from him. That night, he stares at the wall and runs through every single song lyric he’s written about Sunggyu and Sunggyu’s eyes and Sunggyu’s lips and Sunggyu’s fingers until he falls asleep.

He wakes up the next morning with an itch. He paces around their new place until Sungyeol stumbles, half-dressed, out of his room and throws a pillow at his head and tells him to, “Shut up, Woohyun, people are still sleeping, I hate you so much.” He unlocks their door and paces around the hallway before he’s pushing the door of the stairs and taking them down, two by two, until he’s in front of the door of his dorm—his old dorm. He hesitates for just a second before he’s raising his fist and knocking, a steady tap-tap-tap-tap-tap. There’s no response, so he waits a few seconds before he tries again.

Tap-tap-ta—and the door opens, and Woohyun very nearly sends his fist flying into Howon’s face. “What,” Howon growls, his voice still scratchy with sleep. “the fuck do you want?”

Woohyun studies Howon’s face. There are bags under his eyes, bags that Howon’s going to need to go over with concealer later if he doesn’t want fifty articles popping up about his health, and his lips are pressed so tightly together that Woohyun wonders if he’ll be able to part them again. then again, it’s no surprise that Howon is so mad, given that it’s six in the morning and the sky outside is still dark and Woohyun’s undoubtedly woken him up from a nice dream. “You’re door duty now, huh? You’re door duty because you’re the baby in this dorm now, huh? Bet you wish you were with me upstairs now, huh?” Woohyun coos, patting Howon’s cheek, and he slips into the dorm and narrowly avoids Howon’s swat when he brings his hand down. “Careful, Howon-ah, we don’t want you hurting yourself, what if you end up with a nasty bruise on your hand?”

Howon gives Woohyun a dirty look, and Woohyun can tell that he’s angry by the way that his veins and muscles flex underneath his wifebeater, and Woohyun opens his mouth and decides to push him just a little further. “Hey, don’t go giving me that show, there’s no one here to admire your body for you. Maybe go upstairs, there’s someone there I’m sure will love it if you flex your muscles for him.” Woohyun’s sure to add one last eyebrow wiggle to that last sentence, injecting as much of a leer as he can into his voice.

“God, you’re so annoying, this is why we all agreed that you were gonna move out. It was so nice and quiet, too. But why are you back again?” Howon groans again, and he gives Woohyun one last, lingering glare before he’s stalking back to his own room and slamming the door behind him. It’s easy to push Howon’s buttons when he’s still groggy from sleep, before Howon has the chance to properly compose himself to endure the rest of the day. But now that Howon’s gone, Woohyun doesn’t remember why he came here—why he even left his room in the first place.

He starts pacing around the living room here, before he remembers that Dongwoo’s still here and the last person Woohyun wants to disturb is Dongwoo. He stops pacing in front of his room—Sunggyu’s room, now, only Sunggyu’s room—and he places his hand on the door and he tries to imagine what’s inside. Sunggyu, deep asleep, with his hair a complete mess, with his entire body covered with one of his downy comforters, with an extra pillow tucked underneath his arms, with his mouth slightly parted the way it always is when he sleeps.

Woohyun’s heart hurts.

He steps away from the door, one step backwards at first, then two, then he’s turning on his heel and walking back out of the dorm, but not before he grabs a pair of Sunggyu’s favorite sneakers from the shoe rack next to the door. It might be a little bit desperate, might be a little bit clingy, but if he gets to see Sunggyu again, there’s nothing he won’t do.

 

Sungjong is the first one who tells Woohyun that he needs help—that Woohyun needs to either talk to Sunggyu or talk to someone who can help him get over Sunggyu, and Woohyun isn’t keen on doing either of these things. Sungjong stares Woohyun down and Woohyun stares back up at Sungjong—and he can’t believe he has to stare _up_ at Sungjong now, where did the scrawny little fifteen year old they all knew go?—and Woohyun isn’t about to lose a staring match, so he grins when Sungjong finally gives up, clutching at his face. but then Sungjong resurfaces and levels a steely gaze at Woohyun and he says, “Seriously, hyung, I’m not kidding. you need to talk to someone.”

Woohyun gives what he hopes is the exact same face back to Sungjong, and he says, in the most neutral voice he can muster, “I don’t need to talk to anyone, and you’re wasting your time, Sungjong.” he smiles, then, a sickly sweet smile that he hopes is going to get Sungjong out of his room and back into his own, and says, “Go back to playing with kids your own age.”

Sungjong’s eyes harden. “Hyung, seriously, shut up. We all know you’re trying to hide, but it’s not going to work, and we’re all trying to stop you from hurting yourself more than you deserve to be hurt, alright?” Woohyun stares. Sungjong doesn’t break eye contact, and Woohyun loses, glancing downwards to where Sungjong’s folding his hands over one another on his lap, and he glances back upwards to where Sungjong’s still staring at him.

He forgets Sungjong has grown. How could he not, when whenever he sees Sungjong he sees that same fifteen year old who’d wandered into their practice room one day and made himself a place in all of their hearts, that same sixteen year old who’d stood and danced and sang with them on their debut stage and pretended like the lights and the noises didn’t shock him, that same eighteen year old who’d told Woohyun, late one night, that he hated being an alpha, that he hated it and everything that came with it, that he wished he were born a beta or an omega instead.

He’s seen Sungjong only as a child this entire time when Sungjong is taller and stronger than he is now, and he wonders just how much time has flown, how much he’d missed while he’d been so caught up in his own mind that he forgot to stop and ask the others how they were doing. He smiles, defeated this time, and pats the space on the bed next to him. “Sit down, Sungjong-ah,” Woohyun says, grinning when Sungjong’s eyes widen. “If you want to so badly, then talk to me.”

 

In retrospect, all the signs were there—Woohyun just chose to ignore all of them, but he doesn’t know why he never listens to all of his senses. maybe it's out of some sick desire to ruin one of the best things he’s ever had in his life, maybe it’s out of some want he's had buried deep inside him to completely and irrevocably fuck up something he’s been building up for so many years in just a matter of seconds, but—

He should’ve known that time so many years ago, when he’d gone up to tell Sunggyu that he wanted to do another run through of their dance and Sunggyu had looked at him with unfocused eyes and he’d only had a split second to think that _something’s not right_ before Sunggyu had collapsed, face first, into Woohyun’s chest. Tt had been so chaotic, with Sungyeol and Dongwoo running around and trying to open the windows and Howon and Myungsoo and Sungjong all trying to call for an ambulance at the same time. Woohyun had felt strangely calm, like he’d known exactly what to do to deal with it, and he’d carried Sunggyu into the back of the managers’ van and sat with him as they sped to the hospital. They’d tried to tell Woohyun to leave, to go get some food or some water, but he’d refused to leave Sunggyu’s side until they were all sure that nothing would happen to him. The doctors had come back and, with their clipboards and pens in hand, had told them all that nothing was wrong, that Sunggyu was just exhausted beyond belief and his body couldn’t handle the stress and the strain coupled with his impending heat. Woohyun had felt the world crash in on him when they’d said that Sunggyu’s heat was coming up, and he’d looked around the entire room to scan for any similar signs of shock—and no one had looked surprised at that at all, and Woohyun had thought to himself that Sunggyu must’ve kept the fact that he was an omega secret from Woohyun only, that he must’ve told everyone but Woohyun and left Woohyun to believe, stupidly, that he was a beta. He’d been about to leave, really, but then Sunggyu had opened his eyes and breathed out his name and Woohyun had lost himself in the sea of everything Sunggyu meant to him again.

He should’ve known seven months ago during promotions and when they were all already tired of the song and the dance and the performances. Sunggyu had dragged him out to go eat, leading him past rickety storefronts and mom and pop joints hidden away in corners, and he’d only stopped when he got to a tiny and cramped restaurant. Woohyun had let go then, and he’d craned his head up to look at the sign hanging above the tiny door, wondering why that name seemed so familiar, and Sunggyu had rocked on his heels and asked in an deceptively innocent tone, “You don’t remember this place?” and that’s all it had taken for the memories to come rushing back to him, the memories of the two of them going out to eat, just the two of them alone at this place. They’d shared soju and chicken back then, talking about their pasts (their family lives, their school lives, any romances of days gone by) and their present (what songs they were going to work on next, what dances they wanted to learn) and their futures (what they would be like once they debuted, what they wanted to do after Infinite, after the army, after everything was over). Woohyun had stopped thinking and he’d looked straight at Sunggyu and Sunggyu had looked at him with the fondest smile again and he’d called in some orders of soju and chicken. ”Just like old times,” Sunggyu had said, raising a bottle of soju in the air, and Woohyun had echoed his every word. “Like old times.”

He should’ve known three months ago, when Sunggyu had gone off on his own to promote his own solo tracks, and the gulf between their taents and public recognition he’d known was already large and expansive became even larger and more expansive. He’d gone on radio shows and variety shows on his own, and Woohyun had listened to and watched every single last one of them. the others had already given up, citing their needs to do things that didn’t involve looking at Sunggyu’s face for longer than they absolutely had to, but Woohyun had stayed there, plastered to the television and to his computer, soaking in the sound of Sunggyu’s voice and the pixels of Sunggyu’s face. Woohyun had liked those nights the most because Sunggyu wouldn’t go home to his own dorm—no, he’d let himself back into the upstairs apartment and he’d let himself into Woohyun’s room and he’d curl around Woohyun on the bed and mutter into his neck, “Shut up, this doesn’t mean I like you, this just means I haven’t had significant human contact in a significant amount of time.” Woohyun had smiled indulgently and patted the hair on Sunggyu’s head and said, “Sure, sure. Just don’t tell the others. They might get jealous.”

He should’ve known just last week, when Woohyun had decided, spur of the moment, to go downstairs to bother Dongwoo and Howon and Sunggyu. He’d bounded down the steps enthusiastically, excitement in his every pad of his foot, and he’d knocked on the door the same way he’d always done—tap-tap-tap-tap-tap—and before he could finish the fourth tap, Howon was there in front of the door. “Hello!” Woohyun had yelled right into Howon’s face, and he’d relished the way Howon leaned backwards as if simply leaning backwards could save him from Woohyun, and he’d taken that moment to try to push into the dorm. “Woohyun,” Howon had said, firm, and something in his tone of voice had made Woohyun stop in his tracks and stare at him. “Sunggyu-hyung’s not here. he went out with his friends.” and if he’d been surprised, which he hadn’t been at all, one hundred percent, Woohyun hadn’t let it show. he’d grinned even more annoyingly than before and smushed Howon’s cheeks together and practically screamed, “Who cares about Sunggyu? I’m here for _you_!” Howon had ducked into the bathroom right after, and Woohyun isn’t going to kid himself by saying that he hadn’t gone down to that downstairs apartment looking for one person and one person only.

But he really should’ve known today, when he’d been doing nothing at all. he’d only been sitting on the couch, watching reruns of some old show, when he’d felt a curious itch again. He’s not stupid enough not to notice that it’s the same itch he’d felt the first time he’d woken up so early and his feet had led him, at six in the morning, to Sunggyu. He unlocks his own door and then the door of his dorm and then goes down the stairs again, stopping right in front of the door. there’s a strange smell coming from the dorm and that only makes Woohyun want to investigate it more. He starts his knocking again, his tap-tap-tap-tap-tap, and then Sunggyu opens it and then Woohyun’s throat and his mouth turn dry. He doesn’t know what to say to Sunggyu, not now, not when he’d come here without a concrete plan and any things to do, and he’s terrified that Sunggyu’s going to send him back. But then he looks closer and he realizes that this is the shirt Sunggyu’s worn for the past day, that this is the shirt Sunggyu always wears the same things during his heat so he can minimizine the amount of laundry he’ll have to do later. He inhales, just a regular breath in, and then he realizes that the smell he’d noticed coming from their dorm isn’t any kind of new spice—that it’s the smell of Sunggyu’s heat. He takes one step forward, and—

Most of the day is a haze to him, his memories overwritten with black, and he knows now that that’s when his alpha had taken over. but he remembers noises most clearly, and he remembers the breathy whines Sunggyu had made into his ear, when he’d backed Sunggyu up against a table and hitched his legs up and fucked him against the wall. he remembers feeling like he hadn’t even been in control of his own body, like it was someone else moving and walking and talking for him. What he remembers most vividly, though, throughout all of the grayness and the blackness of that night, is what he’d felt the second he’d lowered his head to nuzzle the junction of Sunggyu’s neck, like it had been a more potent signalling of _I’m home_ , and he hadn’t even thought that much of it at the time but he’d opened his mouth against Sunggyu’s neck and he’d bitten down hard enough to draw blood.

He remembers jerking away from Sunggyu because it had been only then that he realized what he’s done, and Woohyun had felt something warm and wet drip from his chin and he’d hoped to everything out there that it wasn’t blood except he'd known that there’s no way it was anything but. He remembers how wide Sunggyu’s eyes had been, slack and beautiful with shock, and Woohyun’s alpha had triumphantly crowed out _look how pretty my omega is_ and Woohyun had told his alpha to shut the fuck up.

Because they weren’t supposed to be mated, they were never supposed to be mated—Sunggyu was supposed to find someone who was more of an alpha, someone who was tall and dark and handsome and very clearly an alpha instead of someone who was like Woohyun, treading the fine line between _is_ and _is not_ , with the way that he _is_ an alpha, with all the needs and wants of alphas, but the way that he smells like a beta, his alpha status indistinguishable to the outside world. But then they were mated in that split second that Woohyun’s teeth had taken to break the soft skin of Sunggyu’s neck and Woohyun doesn’t know how he can ever face Sunggyu ever again, now that he’s stolen his future and his dreams and everything he’s ever wanted from him.

 

Woohyun stays. He fucks Sunggyu through the rest of his heat, and he’s never been more glad than he is now that Sunggyu isn’t like other omegas, where his heat lasts just one or two days as opposed to the usual two to three. This way, he doesn’t have to be around Sunggyu for too long, doesn’t have to see his face for too long, doesn’t have to be reminded of what he’s done. The bond is practically _screaming_ at him to kiss Sunggyu, to run his hands all over Sunggyu’s chest and stomach and hips, to mouth over the mating mark and press gentle kisses to something that only happened because of an act of violence.

He knows it’s only because of the bond that Sunggyu keeps trying to reach for him, and it gets harder and harder to keep evading Sunggyu’s hands that keep reaching for his face. He knows that if Sunggyu were in his right mind, he would shove Woohyun off of him and walk to the nearest hospital and get the bond broken himself. He knows that if and when Sunggyu wants to do that, that’ll be everything that Woohyun deserves. He doesn’t know how long it’ll take—how long it’ll take for them to get it broken, how long it’ll take for the chemicals to set in and for their bodies to undo what’s already been done, how long it’ll be before their relationship can go back to the way it was before Woohyun had ruined everything, how long it’ll take for Sunggyu to forgive him. but, Woohyun thinks, if Sunggyu never forgave him, he’d deserve that, too.

Woohyun can’t stop himself from feeling, though. He can’t stop himself from tugging Sunggyu’s body back to him after they’ve both come, when Woohyun’s still deep inside Sunggyu and he can’t quite bring himself to pull out, not when every movement he makes causes Sunggyu’s head to loll back just that bit more. He can’t stop himself from licking a wet stripe down Sunggyu’s neck and reveling in the way Sunggyu shivers with his entire body at that, in the way Sunggyu unconsciously rolls his hips backwards against Woohyun’s. But more than that, though, he can’t stop himself from reaching forward to take Sunggyu’s wrists and hold them in a mockery of an embrace, and he can’t stop himself from letting the pricks in his eyes go, and his vision goes blurry with tears.

Sunggyu keeps trying to talk to him. he knows. Sunggyu is kind like that, and if his kindness is a side of him that not many people get to see, the better. Sunggyu’s probably trying to reassure him, to tell Woohyun that everything’s okay, that they’re going to make this work if they work together, but Woohyun doesn’t want to hear it. He knows that the words Sunggyu’s going to say are just the bond talking, that it’s the bond humming through them and intensifying all of their emotions and amplifying everything they feel while Woohyun pushes, slowly, back into Sunggyu’s wetness when he feels the next wave of his heat coming up again. It doesn’t mean anything, not now, not when they’re both reeling from the shock and trying to figure out what this means. Sunggyu’s far too kind to let Woohyun self-destruct, and Woohyun only wishes that Sunggyu were kind enough to let him go.

He leaves as soon as Sunggyu’s heat is over, and now he knows when Sunggyu’s heat is over when he can feel it dissipating from the air around them, when the smells of come and blood still hang heavy in the air but the fiery intensity of their bond’s settled into something less, something more relaxed, and the ease of it all makes Woohyun’s entire body itch, and he knows he has to get away. He has to tear his eyes away from the way that Sunggyu’s pillow is stained with spots of red, and he only manages to get a pair of shorts on him—he doesn’t even know if they’re his, he’s not sure where his own clothes are, but he doesn’t care—before he’s sprinting as fast as he can out of the room.

He doesn’t even know how he makes it back upstairs—his legs feel like they’re made of lead, and every step he takes feels like the most exhausting thing in the world. the door is still open, and Woohyun staggers forward until he collapses onto the ground. The floor is cold under his cheek, and he can’t help but curl up, tucking his knees to his chest and pressing the palms of his hands to his temples like it’ll make the ringing in his ears go away. His head feels like it’s getting split apart, and his stomach suddenly feels queasy like he’s just been thrown into the air with no safety net, and he feels like he’s about to throw up everything he’s ever eaten. But he hasn’t eaten in what feels like ages, and when he rolls over, still clutching his stomach, he dry heaves onto the ground, but the only thing that comes out is his own saliva mixed in with some of the blood still on the edges of his lips.

Suddenly, Woohyun’s tired. He feels like the weight of the world’s settled into his bones, and he sighs, a shuddering breath escaping his lips, and tries to avoid the pool of spit on the ground when he curls up again. he’s only very vaguely aware that he’s somewhere in their own living room, with Myungsoo’s photography equipment in the corner and Sungyeol’s dog toys scattered over next to the television stand, and he realizes, before he falls asleep, that where he’s laying is directly above where Sunggyu’s room is.

He’s woken up when he hears a series of loud footsteps pounding up the stairs and throwing the door open and rushing into their own place. maybe, he thinks deliriously, he should’ve locked the door. But it's too late to voice anything he’s thinking because there are arms underneath his, hauling him upwards, and he blinks because the world is shifting beneath him again, and he feels like he’s going to throw up again. But everything hurts too much to speak, and he realizes that this is his punishment for neglecting the bond. _Sorry_ , he thinks, hoping that it’ll resonate through the bond and reach Sunggyu when his words can’t, and he knows that Sunggyu must be feeling this way too.

“Get up,” he hears, and it’s Howon’s voice that’s low and deep, an alpha’s growl that makes the hairs on the back of Woohyun’s neck stand on end. Woohyun doesn’t reply, though—he can’t, not when his mouth feels like it’s numb and full of cotton balls when he tries to open it, so he just doesn’t. he lets himself be dragged out of their apartment, and, he realizes with no small amount of alarm, down the stairs. He tries to fight back, but his limbs are useless and he can’t do anything at all but wish he were anywhere else but here.

And then Howon pushes open a door and shoves Woohyun in and Woohyun stumbles and he realizes that this is his old room, that this is Sunggyu’s room now, and he lifts his head up and he meets Sunggyu’s eyes from where he’s lying on that same bed, his hands outstretched towards the door, and he doesn’t even hear Howon say, “Make this right, you fucker,” because he’s too busy losing himself in Sunggyu’s eyes again, and the feelings of warmth and longing and want crash into Woohyun and he knows, not with his brain but with his heart, that that’s not the bond speaking, that it’s Sunggyu, and that he’s home.

 

They don’t really talk about that, though. There’s a tightness around Sunggyu’s eyes whenever Woohyun thinks about how Sunggyu had crawled onto the ground with him that day, about how Sunggyu had told him the words he’d always wanted to hear, about how Sunggyu had told him that he’d wanted this, too, from the very beginning, and that there was nothing Woohyun could do that would make Sunggyu leave. Woohyun knows that whenever he thinks about that day, his side of the bond gets flooded with a sinking melancholy and Sunggyu feels it, too. so Woohyun stops thinking about it, and he lets Sunggyu pinch his cheeks and and pull his hair and pepper his forehead with light kisses.

“Repeat after me: my name is nam Woohyun,” Sunggyu says on those days, glaring down at Woohyun from where he’s perched on Woohyun’s hips, the twist of his lips still somehow endearing, and Woohyun’s struck with a desire to kiss that frown off his face. “And I’m an idiot.”

“Your name is Kim Sunggyu,” Woohyun intones, keeping the expression on his face as neutral as he possibly can, but he can’t stop a small smirk from curling across his lips. “And you’re an idiot.”

“Shut up,” Sunggyu says, and reaches forward to grab Woohyun’s cheeks again, smushing them together. He squints down at Woohyun. “Do it properly. My name is Nam Woohyun and I’m an idiot, but still, for some reason that the world will never understand, I deserve to be with Kim Sunggyu, the greatest singer in this room right now.”

Woohyun laughs in Sunggyu’s face, and when he sees the ends of Sunggyu’s lips start curling downwards again, he darts upwards and forward to peck him on the nose before he’s settling back onto the pillow. “My name is Nam Woohyun and I’m an idiot, but still, for some reason that the world will never understand, I deserve to be with Kim Sunggyu, who is not the greatest because I am actually the greatest singer is in this room right now.”

Then Sunggyu’s leaning downwards and bracing himself above Woohyun, his face dangerously close to Woohyun’s, and Woohyun can feel every breath Sunggyu takes against his lips when he says, conversationally, “I hate you so much, Woohyun.” But there’s a surge of something that’s definitely not hate thrumming through the bond when Woohyun pushes at Sunggyu’s shoulder to tumble him down backwards onto the bed, and Woohyun hopes that Sunggyu can feel what he’s feeling right now, where every thought in Woohyun’s mind is everything he’s ever loved about him.

“You too,” Woohyun says, leaning in to kiss Sunggyu on the forehead, over his eyelids, across his cheekbones, at the corners of his lips, and he pulls back to admire the way Sunggyu’s flushed now, a powder pink dusting the bridge of his nose and making his cheeks flush. Sunggyu’s breaths come out in short, quick puffs from his parted lips, and Woohyun stares down at the way Sunggyu’s chest is rising and falling so quickly, his heart racing underneath Woohyun’s fingertips, and Woohyun whispers, like it’s a secret that only the two of them will ever know, “I love you so much.”

Sunggyu’s hand reaches up in between them to tangle with Woohyun’s, and it’s almost too much to bear when Sunggyu’s fingers are warm and solid against his, when Sunggyu’s other hand curls around the back of Woohyun’s neck to drag him in closer, when he can feel Sunggyu smiling against his lips, and he knows that there are a thousand and one ways that everything could have happened, that there are so many paths he could have followed that wouldn’t have led him to this moment, and he hopes that when he tightens his fingers around Sunggyu’s, that Sunggyu will understand that there’s nothing in the world Woohyun wouldn't give up—that there’s nothing Woohyun wouldn’t do to be with Sunggyu, to be here and now with him.

 

(my head is filled with thoughts of you  
if only i could, i would give you my everything  
my heart is filled with longing for you  
if only i could, i would fill every part of my life with you)

**Author's Note:**

> feedback and concrit are, as always, welcomed and appreciated! ♡


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